I Meant To Do My Work Today

Spotted Towhee

I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,

Ornamental Peach, ‘Peppermint’

And a butterfly flittered across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.

Pretty Face, Triteleia ixioides

*And the Buttercups nodded their smiling heads,
Greeting the bees who came to call,
And I asked the lizard the time of day,
As he sunned himself on a moss-grown wall.

Needle grass

And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,

March rainbow, winters end?

And a rainbow held out its shining hand,
So what could I do but laugh and go?

Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947)

*For the movie ‘Friends’ (1971), Elton John added the middle verse to this poem by Le Gallienne. The video scene, featuring this poem in the movie score, is haunting and beautiful.